


A date with Elvira

by FlorenceVassy



Category: In the Loop (2009), In the Loop (2009) & The Thick of It, The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: F/F, honestly a crime, second chapter will likely be smutty enjoy, why is there not more judy fic???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28754238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorenceVassy/pseuds/FlorenceVassy
Summary: Judy Molloy is the new Director of Communications at DoSAC. Ever since party conference in Manchester, Nicola's had a little thing for her.
Relationships: Judy Molloy/Nicola Murray
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	A date with Elvira

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweatingHerLadyBollocksOff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweatingHerLadyBollocksOff/gifts).



Judy had to admit that a transfer from DfID to dowdy DoSAC after their Director of Comms left—to go and open a tea shop, she thought someone had said?—was something of a downgrade, but she supposed, like any job, it must have its perks, however small.

The coffee machine on the floor below was pretty good. You could get actual cappuccinos, not just those weak filter coffees they had in the last place. There was a neat little balcony, too, that got quite pretty in the summer, for whenever she was so fucking furious she felt the need to nip out for a quick fag to cool off. Not that anyone could ever tell she was furious: no, that went against _everything_ in the Civil Service handbook.

That was where she found herself now, on the tiny little alcove with a not un-amazing view of Westminster. The sun was beating down on her, and she expertly kept the fag pursed between her lips as she rolled up her shirtsleeves, exposing her pale arms to its warming rays. At the start of the year she’d told herself she was going to give up. “Fat chance,” she thought, scoffing at her naïveté six months later, pouting her lips and rolling her eyes, “working here’ll keep the entire tobacco industry in business.”

Judy tossed the butt to the floor, stamping it out with the pointed end of her heel. As she prepared herself to reenter the Department of Socially Awkward Cunts, as she had taken to calling it in her head, she heard the door go behind her. Well, well, someone else had discovered her secret smoking spot, then. Hope they like the fragrant scent of Marlboro Golds.

Well, she hadn’t expected _her_ to be the one to come and join her out here.

“Boss,” Judy smirked, pleasant surprise showing on her face. The other perk of working here.

“Judy,” Nicola smiled, a look of alarm in her eyes just subtle enough to be picked up on by someone like her Director of Comms—was this her secret spot, too? “What…what are you doing out here?” she blinked, smile fixing into a slight frown.

The great thing about her boss was that she was so easily riled. Judy only had to look at her wrong and Nicola was alternating between panicking and complaining to the nearest civil servant about what she’d done to piss her off/what a fucking bitch with a stick up her tight little arse she was. Judy had noted that last comment about the Secretary of State thinking she had a quote unquote, tight little arse, with particular pleasure.

“Just having a fag,” the taller woman replied, cool as anything. “Want one?” she took the box out of her shirt pocket, proffering the golden box with pointed red fingernails.

“No, thank you,” Nicola replied, once again all polite smiles. “Just…out here for a bit of fresh air, that’s all.”

“‘fraid you might get a lungful of Marlboro’s finest instead,” Judy joked, pocketing the box and flashing her minister a smile before heading back inside.

“Judy, um—”

She spun around, quirking a perfectly arched brow in Nicola’s direction. “Minister?”

Judy knew the effect she had on the minister, she wasn’t blind. They bitched at each other like anything: the woman was hopeless at anything media-related, she often thought she’d have better luck sending out a chimpanzee in a badly brushed-out wig from a Kate Bush costume, and worse than that, she was _completely_ neurotic. And Judy knew what she thought about her, cold, callous— she had once overheard Nicola refer to her as “who, Chairwoman Molloy over there?”—the usual labels people threw at her.

But, despite all their bitching, Judy hadn’t failed to notice the stares from Nicola that often lingered a little too long in Dull as the Darts on a Saturday Afternoon meetings. Nor had she failed to notice the weirdly adorable way that she had blushed when, at the party conference a couple of months earlier, she had walked in on Judy with her arms above her head, bare to her bra as she changed her top.

“Oh Jesus, Judy, we’re in fucking Manchester, not at the bloody Moulin Rouge,” she had cried, characteristically flustered as ever. “Put your tits away, for God’s sake!”

“Ooh, matron,” Judy had replied, pulling the black shirt down over her arms til it was covering her chest, smirking at the sight of the pink flush flooding Nicola’s face.

Judy raised her brow quizzically, flicking her fringe across her forehead as she turned to face her.

“I was just wondering…” the shorter woman started, eyes darting about her face, “how the fuck do you do that with Malcolm?”

Judy smiled, taking a step towards Nicola, licking her lips a little. “You’ll, um, have to be more specific.”

Nicola laughed a little, pushing a thick portion of hair behind her ear. “Right. What I mean is, how the fuck do you silence him like that? I think I give as good as I get with him—”

“You do,” Judy interjected, fixing her with that sharp stare that Nicola always found herself wishing she could emulate.

“—right,” Nicola continued, laughing awkwardly, causing Judy to smirk, yet again—“but I’ve never been able to leave him speechless, you know? He always just…carries on with the attack. I feel like I can never get one over on him. I just want to…” Nicola trailed off, searching for the right word.

“…climb up onto his face if it’ll make him shut the fuck up?” Judy offered, nonchalantly.

“Yes!” Nicola said, face lighting up, before she realised what she had agreed to. “I mean, not quite that, but…the general idea of it, yes.”

Judy grinned, leaning back against the metal railing, the sun shining off her dark hair, bronzing her exposed wrists. She also knew what Nicola truly admired about her was her ability to deal with Malcolm. No civil servant nor even government employee could handle him quite like her. She had reduced him to stunned silence on multiple occasions: her new favourite trick was to simply walk away whilst he was in the middle of bollocking her, her lips pursed into a dark little smile, pretending she couldn’t hear his cries of “get back here before I leak the _very messy_ details of your divorce—oh, you think I don’t know darlin’? Half the whole a fuckin’ Westminster heard about his nibs and the whore—”

“Thing with Malcolm, Nicola,” she replied, gazing intently at her boss, “is that you’ve gotta handle him like your worst enemy’s cock.”

Nicola’s eyes widened. Clearly, she hadn’t expected her new Director of Comms to be as bad as the boys when it came to the use of violent, sexual literary devices.

“Get it going til it’s right on the edge,” Judy said, voice low and authoritative, “then walk away before it has the chance to pop off.” She watched as her boss’s face settled into that thing it did when she had pretended to understand something, and made an urgent mental note to get Nicola more media training…face training? Is that a thing?

“Right, thanks, Judy…you’ve been um, very helpful,” Nicola replied, unconvincing as ever. Maybe make that media training a priority.

“Walk away, Nicola,” Judy said, simplifying it. “Just…walk away.”

She turned and flashed another dark smile, before doing just that, leaving the minister alone on the balcony, that stare that always fell upon her face that told Judy just how puzzled Nicola was by her.

* * *

Judy climbed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, blowing carefully at the cappuccino she had got from the machine downstairs. Definitely exploiting that perk.

She pulled her earphones out as she approached the floor of her office, the sounds of Radio 4’s _Today_ programme replaced by the unmistakable sounds of angry Scottish shouts mixed in with the plummy tones of a middle-aged woman just _slightly_ out of her depth. She glanced at her watch, which told her it was barely even nine o’clock. So they’d started early today, then.

“Oh, ’n here’s fuckin’ Elvira herself come to have a go, huh? What you got to say for yourself, o Mistress of the Dark?” Malcolm spat, gesticulating wildly at her before she’d even made it up the last step.

“Morning, Malcolm,” Judy replied calmly, breezing past him and nodding at Nicola as she went. “Fly’s undone.”

Malcolm scoffed, rolling his eyes so far into the back of his head Judy thought they might get stuck there. “Like I’m gonnae fall for that one,” he said, “get some new material, eh, Judy? This is the fuckin’ Pantheon, yeah, not the fuckin’ toilet of the High School for Posh Bints.”

Her eyes flashed to his crotch and she smirked, took a sip of her drink, and sat down at her desk. She’d already riled him up and she’d only been in the office…what, four minutes? Surely a new personal best.

“Um, actually, Malcolm, the thing is…your fly is actually down.”

The silence that followed made Judy look up from her desk. A grin slowly crept across her face, as Malcolm looked down and realised. Nicola had only been trying to help, as was in her nature, but Judy knew that she was about to get it in the neck. 3, 2, 1, and…

“You think it’s funny, darlin’?” Malcolm snarled, as Nicola began to smile, partly out of embarrassment, partly out of genuine amusement at her boss being caught unawares. “You know what I find even more funny, what gets my fuckin’ ribs ticklin’ after a long, hard day of being stuck here with your fuckin’ pathetic excuse for a functioning government department?”

Nicola had stopped smiling. She looked positively stressed, the poor thing. It didn't do to be scared of fuckers like Malcolm and Jamie, and Nicola fought back—Jesus, did she, the screaming matches those two would get in could wake an entire sanitarium for the deaf from the deepest sleep—but she didn’t always have the bite to match the bark. Zingers were not her strong point. Judy remembered a particularly painful moment where she had flubbed a pre-prepared line on _Question Time_ : she was meant to say “strong, sensible plans to enable our most disabled people” but had come out with, “strong plans to disable the most enabled”. She had tried to correct it but only made it worse. Judy drank an entire bottle of wine when she got home.

“What I find fuckin’ _hilarious_ ,” Malcolm said, leading up to his punchline, “is thinkin’ about how fast your career is gonna go down the drain darlin’, yeah? The backbenchers won’t even have you, you’ll be so fuckin’ tainted, you’ll have Soft Cell singin’ about you—”

What Nicola did next surprised him. It also seemed to surprise herself, judging by the expression on her face. In the middle of his rant, Nicola simply sidestepped him and walked away. Well, maybe “simply” was putting it nicely: she got the sleeve of her blazer caught on the door handle, foiling her cool exit, but still. By Nicola’s standards, it was a pretty triumphant moment.

Judy’s mouth fell into a pouty smile as she logged onto her computer and heard Malcolm ranting and raving at the nearest civil servant. Good for Nicola.

* * *

It was coming up to five o’clock and Judy had her hopes on getting out of the office reasonably on time today. There was half a bottle of red and a crime drama boxset on iPlayer waiting for her at home. Apparently this was what being in your mid-forties and divorced was all about.

“Judy,” came a voice. She looked up and saw her boss hovering by her desk, in the way she always did when she was about to dump a load of work on her at the last minute.

“Minister," Judy replied, professional as ever. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to get ahead of the curve with this social protection policy launch,” Nicola said, clutching her BlackBerry in one hand, “basically, you know, make sure all the papers and blogs know about it. We’re pushing it forward.”

Judy narrowed her eyes, nodding slowly as she realised what exactly the minister was asking in her weird backwards way. “You want me to brief the press on the policy?”

“Yes,” Nicola said, nodding quickly, and Judy noted her alarming resemblance to one of those nodding dogs from the insurance adverts. “By tomorrow afternoon, please.”

“Tomorrow afternoon? You want the whole of the British press briefed on this policy by tomorrow afternoon? You know, you don’t ask for much, minister—” Judy started, realising she was probably going to have to come in early if she was going to make this happen.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, this has come from the top! The top dogs! They’re essentially nicking my bloody policy to distract from Tom’s latest marital fuckup,” Nicola sighed, and Judy could tell she was frazzled. Pushing the policy launch forwards had clearly knocked her for six, too.

As Judy noticed the time on her computer, she stood up and began to get herself in order, flicking her hair out from her collar as she pulled her light summer jacket on, adjusting her watch, kicking on the heels she had slipped off underneath her desk. She noticed that Nicola was still stood there, eyeing her as she sometimes did, without really realising, it seemed.

“Is…there something else, Nicola?” Judy asked, smiling in that tightlipped way she hoped came across as polite.

“Yes, actually,” Nicola said, tapping her fingers awkwardly on Judy’s desk. “I, um, wanted to thank you. For your advice, on how to handle Malcolm.”

“Not at all, minister,” Judy laughed softly. “He certainly wasn’t expecting that.”

It was Nicola’s turn to laugh. “He really wasn’t, was he?” she said, grinning. “I could hear him yelling after me even as I was halfway down the corridor. It had him _furious_ , I’ve never seen him like that.”

“Well,” Judy said, brushing past Nicola as she turned to leave, “now you know.”

Judy headed for the double doors at the end of the office, thinking if she slipped through St James’s Park fast enough, she could make it just in time to hop onto the Circle line in ten minutes. That plan was quickly halted when she heard her boss’s voice, calling her name, yet again.

“Yes?” she said, turning on her heel, fixing a smile to her face.

“I was wondering if you’d actually fancy, um, going for a drink, or something? My treat, of course, just to say thank you, really, for you know, helping me cope with Malcolm, and for all the other fantastic things you do around here—really, our last head of comms was just fucking terrible—” Nicola spilled, doing that word vomity thing she always did.

“I’d love to,” Judy said, interrupting her mid-spiel, “uh, when?”

“Uh,” Nicola started, raising her eyebrows, “now, I was thinking?”

“Oh, yeah. Now,” Judy said, nodding, “now is great. I…will…wait for you downstairs.”

“Good. Good. Okay. See you in a minute,” Nicola replied, heading to her office to collect her things. “Shit,” she thought to herself, panicking already, “a date with Elvira herself? Is that what this is?”

As Judy traipsed downstairs, she found herself beginning to smile, bemused by the situation she found herself in. The previous ministers she’d worked for were usually pretty content with their relationship remaining firmly within the back-and-forth violent bantering territory. She wasn’t stupid; she knew behind closed doors they called her a “nasty little bitch”, sometimes the odd c-word was thrown in there. She knew that behind the jovial, curse-filled dressing-downs, there was often a deep sense of dislike for her, usually for three reasons: because she was a woman, because she was good at her job, and because she was a woman who was good at her job who wasn’t scared of any of them.

She had _friends at work,_ but that seemed different to having actual _work friends_. Did Nicola want to be her friend?

No, that wasn’t it. She bit her lip, quirking her eyebrows as she tried to figure out what exactly it was her boss was getting out of this. Maybe she just really fucking fancied a drink. Maybe she was an alcoholic, desperate for someone with whom to drink away her sorrows.

When she had walked in on her in her hotel room at conference, Judy remembered there was a pause before she made her quip about it being “Manchester and not the Moulin Rouge”.

She had spun around at the sound of the door, and when she realised it was Nicola calling her, something in her made her…oh, she didn’t know…want to make her blush, or something? Give her an eyeful.

So that was what she had done, purposefully taken her time shimmying her top down, letting Nicola’s eyes linger on breasts in that burgundy bra with the lace trim.

“Ready?”

She turned and saw Nicola stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at her brightly, cheeks a little flushed.

“You lead the way,” Judy said, opening the door for her boss, following her out into Westminster, feeling like she had more of an inkling as to where the night would take them.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I was rewatching 'In the Loop' the other night and..there is a devastating lack of Judy fic. I might start a Judy Molloy Appreciation Society. Who better to pair her with than Nicola? Nicola's getting all the F/F pairings atm and I am LOVING it. Hope you enjoy!!


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